GENEVA (AP) – UEFA picked bigger stadiums on Wednesday to host the next two Europa Conference League finals after sub-20,000 capacity venues staged the previous two title games involving clubs from Italy, England and the Netherlands.
The 2024 final in UEFA’s third-tier club competition was awarded to the new AEK Athens stadium which should hold about 30,000 spectators.
In 2025, Slask Wrocław’s stadium will host the final. The venue drew crowds of about 41,000 for three games at the 2012 European Championship that Poland co-hosted with Ukraine.
UEFA’s choices seemed to acknowledge a misjudgment in preseason choices for final hosts in a competition that started in the 2021 to 2022 season.
Fewer than 20,000 fans could get into the new national stadium in Tirana, Albania, for the inaugural final between Roma and Feyenoord in 2022. The 19,000-capacity Slavia Prague stadium was chosen for the 2023 final between West Ham and Fiorentina. West Ham averages more than 62,000 for home games in the Premier League and won playing in its first European final for 47 years.
Teams in next season’s competition with large contingents of travelling fans include Eintracht Frankfurt and Hajduk Split.
The current lineup also includes Juventus and Aston Villa though both risk being excluded because of pending UEFA decisions on, respectively, financial wrongdoing and being in shared ownership with another club that qualified for Europe.
